Elizabeth Warren "We Have A Real Problem Coming"

Elizabeth Warren, head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, which yesterday released quite a sobering report on the true state of the banking industry, explains what is really going on with the increasingly irrelevant balance sheets of the bailout banks (all of them). Once again underscores what a farce the stress test was, the complicity of the accountants in making the transparency initiative a sham, and why the banks are still as underwater as they ever were. Compliments of Shanky's Tech Blog.

This rumor is all over youtube and other sites with
zero proff only connections, friend of a friend,
un-manemd source & ect. lends me to think it won't
happen. But I guess we will see if people start
hitting the ATM this weekend.

Elizabeth Warren is a breath of fresh air... she resonates with her audience... you feel deep inside that she is right... and the other stuff that is blowing around is a bunch of hot air... Taleb is sounding the same type of alarms. The recovery is an illusion that is being created by the government and the MSM... the stock market currently does not reflect the reality of the underlying economy... but it will at some point in the near future.

An analogy: a person has terminal cancer and they may look/act just fine with little appearance of illness during the first stages... we treat the symptoms as the cancer progresses so the patient feels as good as he/she can... but they still end up dying from the cancer. If we were truly receiving a curative treatment for what is ailing this country... then it would have discomfort associated with the treatment much as chemotherapy does... but rather we are receiving narcotics in the form of a stimulus and bailout... and we are somewhat pain free... but we will not be cured.

Hey Marla, this "Pet Error" is the same guy that keeps poping up trying to advertise his silly site. Doesn't he realize we're all getting pretty tired of his crap, and his site is becoming despised, and associated more and more with spam? Spammers suck.

I just watched Taleb on CNBC and he said the same thing that me and my friends have discussed - the root cause has not been addressed, and they should have allowed these assets to go down a ton. POeople would have adjusted, and the taxpayer wouldn't be footing the bill for the rescue of GOldman Sachs, Geithner's buddies. This is such straigh p bs. Geithner and GS stooges are going to have to emigrate when this explodes...

Besides her current gig in the oversight committee - she wrote a great book a few years ago titled 'The Two Income Trap' - fascinating read. She's a smart gal - but unfortunately she accepted a job that's set up to be a failure. However, with the limited power she actually has - she's been quite effective in getting the word out. Maybe that's the best we can hope for.

Isn't the best we can expect from any politician is that they tell the truth?
Kudos to her and all other public servants that understand and can face reality.
All who read here, besiege your public contacts (we all have them, in any industry) to read this site, and to post their grievances here, that we can further pull back the curtain. The electorate listens when you provide them with specifics.

She's on the public record for sure - we have the "I told you so," which is very important on the other side of the impeding implosion because the Ron Paul's of the world will not be marginalized any longer and we "negative" contrarians will not be either. Maybe we'll actually have wisdom restored to its pinnacle? Most of us here and and at other public forums worldwide, second her assertions. We are on the record too. This will end very badly and very soon. Remember this started with the "$100 Billion Sub-Prime" crisis that would end, and what followed within months of ZB's confident proclamation, were the first phases of the liquidity crisis (2007) and then everything that followed.

Now we have RMBS X2 (this will be the worst year of foreclosures yet) plus the CRE crisis (which we have been talking about since last year) is ready to blow. We know what's coming. Do not be surprised by the speed of it.

Every seven seconds a loan to the household sector is defaulted. Warren is in essence saying just wait for the real wave of destructive defaults of the commercial sector to catch up with the household sector. The Fed & Treasury as been expending their efforts in all the wrong places. The phoney phaze of the GFC cannot but come to its conclusion.

I respect your thoughts but I think that a watchdog by definition should be generally 'despised' by those she is dogging... at least a boundary is formed that can't be penetrated by quid pro quo issues... thank god that there are a few dogs still out there... they are dropping like flies.

It isn't the problem that she's despised. The problem is that she brings so many biases to the table. You could find the most compelling case of a fraudulent no-doc mortgage borrower who knew exactly what he was doing, for purposes of flipping condos in a known bubble market. Warren would still place 100% of the blame on the lender. Like many in academia, she's never encountered a problem that can't be blamed on the big, bad corporation.

Yeah. All 100% of the blame goes to the lender here. If you're counting on a bubble (that your own actions are serving to inflate) to save a borrower in a bubble. You deserve to lose every single penny of your ridiculously risky investment.

actually Warren mentions individual failure frequently, but she generally focuses on systems that failed us. Is that the correct emphasis? I agree with her on that focus.

I think the individual idoicy that occured during housing bubble is already well-understood by average folks and well-documented in media, but average folks have only the vaguest sense of the overall corruption and failure of our government and private businesses, "free" market systems (mostly due to their corruption of our government by money) This is what she speaks to.

Going up-river to see where the bodies are coming from seems like a wise course of action. Let CNBC and Oreilly rag on the awful subprime people or fraudulent individual investors, Warren will talk about the rest of the problem. 30 years ago, shoot, 10 years ago, crazy indvidual speculators would have never been able to risk other peoples money they did in 2005 but since it made huge money for much bigger entities than the indvidual speculator, this behavior was encourage. In fact, getting individuals excited enough to act as the "advanced infantry" straw man for the MBS bundler, fraud exporters of Wall Street was needed for their success. All those risky individual investors and over-stretched sub-prime house buyers have crashed and burned and are generally way worse, well-pusished for their greed/stupidity, wish I could say same about banks, wall street.

We can fix this problem on person at a time, or we can put systems in place that serve us, expose and avoid fraud, let our markets act as the free and fair markets they should, take away undeu influence and advantage of big money muscle so everyone can compete, protect themselves financially.

I'm with Warren, fix the system and the indviduals will follow. People want/need better systems and big money to suffer for bad acts, as indviduals do/have; big money wants/needs systems to stay corrupt and indviduals to suffer, so big money does not. Funny thing is, just like subprime, at first this attitude brings them short-term big profits, but eventually they kill the goose that laid the golden egg, and end up with egg on thier face. Just not sustainable economy.

Dogfood....Its the verdict every Political entrepreneur dreads most: “The dogs aren?t eating the dog food” – which means that the Political (VCs) don?t like your pitch, and your campaign won?t get funded.....

But more recently, the bailouts and huge deficit started with the previous administration. But who cares? As others have mentioned this is not a democrat/republican or liberal/conservative issue. That is all like so much celeb scandal and new shiny toys; to keep the sheeple arguing about nothing so that corporations can steal everyone's money and kick back those who help them some spare change.

“I don't vote. Two reasons. First of all it's meaningless; this country was bought and sold a long time ago. The shit they shovel around every 4 years *pfff* doesn't mean a fucking thing. Secondly, I believe if you vote, you have no right to complain. People like to twist that around – they say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain', but where's the logic in that? If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people into office who screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem; you voted them in; you have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote, who in fact did not even leave the house on election day, am in no way responsible for what these people have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created that I had nothing to do with.” -G.C.

I agree, and I haven't voted in years for the same reason. It came to me while standing in line to vote (like a Soviet!) and really listening to the conversations going on all around me, I heard one woman say how she was voting for a candidate "because he was so good looking."

And that, folks, is the level of political discourse in the USA.

It's all American Idol and it is all trash, and it is thus not worth my time to participate in such a farce. And the sooner we realize we have no democracy, the better off we will all be.

The only vote you have is the one you do with your feet--refuse to be a part of the system as much as possible and don't ask for, or accept, anything from it.

I think that in the big picture, relatively little blame for this one lies with the politicians. Their share is dwarfed by that shouldered by the borrowers, the mortgage originators, the investment banks, and the credit ratings agencies. That being said, yes, the Dems probably deserve a bit more blame that the Republicans. The genesis of the problem is the CRA, which was modified in the Clinton administration to REQUIRE the banks to engage in mortgage lending to those who were worse credit risks. This changed the face of mortgage lending, and really jumpstarted many of the problems that have come to a head in recent years. Bush was not perfect on this front -- he absolutely encouraged an "ownership society" that was misguided. But unless you impose Greenspan's actions during the Bush term on the administration, he was relatively harmless in this saga.

I'm an independent, so I have no dog in this fight. But "ran the country into the ground" is a rather large claim to make without providing some backup. I know it's the conventional wisdom, but that doesn't make it true, much less true about every individual issue.

Excellent points, along with those responsible for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act below which allowed banks to act like hedge funds and over-leverage with derivatives.

These derivatives/swaps are the poison in our financial system, or as Warren Buffett called them, weapons of mass destruction (despite turning around and using them). Companies are using them to avoid taxes, manage earnings, avoid leverage restrictions, and make huge directional bets that are compromising the entire system.

The House passed its version of the Financial Services Act of 1999 on July 1st by a bipartisan vote of 343-86 (|Republicans 205–16; Democrats 138–69; Independent/Socialist 0–1),[3][4][5] two months after the Senate had already passed its version of the bill on May 6th by a much-narrower 54–44 vote along basically-partisan lines (53 Republicans and one Democrat in favor; 44 Democrats opposed).[6][7][8][9]

When the two chambers could not agree on a joint version of the bill, the House voted on July 30th by a vote of 241-132 (R 58-131; D 182-1; Ind. 1–0) to instruct its negotiators to work for a law which ensured that consumers enjoyed medical and financial privacy as well as "robust competition and equal and non-discriminatory access to financial services and economic opportunities in their communities" (i.e., protection against exclusionary redlining).[10]

Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers (Democrat) rushed back from a trip to China to huddle with lobbyists representing Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other financial giants. The meeting was closed to the media and public, but one participant told the New York Times that Summers lectured the lobbyists on how to spin this bill so it appears to be in the public interest. "He said it would be very unfortunate if any financial institution were to suggest that they do not see the broad public purpose of this legislation," the lobbyist reported.

Paul Volcker vehemently opposed this! He's a hero along with all the individuals both democrat and republican that opposed this bill pushed by the lobbyists. The rest were in the pockets of the banks.

I am thinking that the holidays at the Leibowitz house must have some interesting conversation... the NYSE isn't Larry's first gig... he has some career history that is similar to Cramers... love to be a fly on the wall.

You stumped me... usually I have to look up some of the obscure financial concepts that TD puts on his website... but it is the first time I have had to look up a non-financial term... "goneff"... but it is quite fitting... a "master thief who robs banks and steals everything in the world of Pokeman"... love to learn something everyday... thanks...

I hope you mean that "Cassandra" reflects positively upon her great insight into things that others can't see. Because in Greek mythology Cassandra was actually given the gift of prophetic insight by Apollo... but when she did not return Apollo's love he placed a curse on her that no one would ever believe her predictions. She is generally thought of as someone whose great insight was not revealed until after the fact. So yes, I agree that five years from now her photo will be next to the entry for "Cassandra" in the dictionary.

I think the best indicators of sentiment are from laymen (people with prior knowledge always spin a bias), so the male anchor's comments at the end "I'm glad that too big to fail world ended on Sept. 15" leave me a little confused.

Either it was unfortunately worded, or it shows just how unreceptive everyone is to the truth outlined a mere 30 seconds earlier.

Notice that this is from MSNBC, the network the right wing nut cases hates. Meanwhile, they are actually putting up some real reporting, while Fox business is hiring Don Ismus to complement the "analysts" they have with suits and ties out of the 70's.

Sirs,
I might suggest that I have seen none of the scrutiny of the COP's loss numbers that the supervisors estimates were subject to. I'd suggest looking under the covers at the methodology. Are you suggesting that the COP can produce better loss estimates than the 200+ staff of the FRS, OCC and FDIC?

Sirs,
I might suggest that I have seen none of the scrutiny of the COP's loss numbers that the supervisors estimates were subject to. I'd suggest looking under the covers at the methodology. Are you suggesting that the COP can produce better loss estimates than the 200+ staff of the FRS, OCC and FDIC?

they are reporting on john paulson buy like it is "new" news or purchases

this man bought over a billion of bac shares at 10. was widely reported

CNBC pumped the stock up 5% AH from a terrible close on MISLEADING news.

"Among the buyers: Mr. Paulson, who made a fortune with his 2006 bet that housing would tumble and snapped up $1 billion of Bank of America shares, a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday. A spokesman for Mr. Paulson's firm declined to comment."

this was from May 2009 WSJ. also reported by cramer on his site. now he's pumping it tonite. he even was fooled as i was

Question, which is probably best answered by the ZHers with experience/knowledge of hedge fund operations: could the paulson BAC purchase just be a flip on his part? i.e., could he have rolled the dice big time knowing that once it was reported there would be a certain group of lemmings who would follow and, naturally, the corollary is could the shares have already been dumped at 16 or whatever? thanks for any insights.

of course he could have flipped already. he could have sold have. he's up 65% in a few months. its not easy to flip that many shares so he would be selling into strength along the way, or scaling out

the bottom line is cnbc fooled me and many others. i was ignoring people's posts that sid it was old and then I realized...christ. they are right. I was buying bac back at 11 on this news in MAY!!!!!!! scumbags

I was thinking the same thing... she cuts right through the BS... but people like her are too smart to run... she probably wakes up everything morning asking herself "what was I thinking accepting this position?".

It's probably up to the historians a decade hence to decide if he escaped or not. My guess is you are probably correct, history will give him a bye. I'm not sure right now who *would* get the blame. We may never get around to figuring it out. For example, who do they blame today for the fall of the Roman Empire in 471AD? There are about as many theories on that as there are theorists.

History has a hard time keeping track of the playerz when the information about who they were and what they did becomes lost in the general destruction they brought down upon themselves. If they felt bad about it all, they didn't manage to pass that information forward for our benefit. We repeat history at least in part because history likes to murder most anyone who could talk about what went wrong.

Roubini is playing to the masses and is trying to be as non-commital as possible... ruling every possibility in so he can't be wrong... I used to read the info on his site everyday... but haven't been there in months...

Yeah...Has anyone seen Nouriel's BALLS lately?? I think Bernanke's boys took him out to the woodshed about 5 months ago, and left them on the counter, because Nouriel has turned into the most non-commital, milk-toast commentator lately...completely soft on all issues he used to have his hair on fire over daily!!

At the begining of a crisis you lie. In the middle of a crisis you say nothing to call question to the lie you told at the begining. At the end of a crisis you stick to the story you told at the begining and privately congratulate yourself for displaying leadership, and the world rolls on much as it did and soon forgets that you said anything at all.

But if instead you find yourself at the *end* of the world -- if instead the crisis grows and consumes all and the way forward is utterly lost -- then you finally tell the truth.

This is how we bargain with the historians, who tend to focus on last words above all. The last words of the soon-to-be-lost are sometimes all that goes forward.

I am a Republican and beleive that Warren is telling the truth and looking out for the people - exactly what she is supposed to do with COP. The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial last week on Citi basically with the same stance that Warren takes.

Look guys, this isn't about Dems or Republicans anymore or liberals or conservatives. It's about whether we turn our country over to a bunch of kleptocrats. The US is quickly becoming more like Russia - not the other way around. Do you think the powerful pols and business owners in Russia give a s*** about what party anyone is in?

The sad thing is that not many people besides Warren and a few others are willing to say what they really think when its contrary to instructions. I really hope that Americans can get some kind of backbone again.

I like your comment, but you might want to think about how you identify yourself. You are not a slave to a party, you are not the car you drive, and you are not your job.

From your comments you have the intelligence to be more and transcend above party affiliation - to think for yourself. You could still appreciate republican concepts as well as borrowing ideas from libertarians and perhaps even a few ideas from the democrats whose hearts are in the right place looking out for the little guy (not the limo liberals).